THE ABSURDITY OF BORDERS

Changes in the methods of exploitation have forced
increasing numbers of people, particularly from the
poorer countries, to take the path of immigration.
Though useful to capital as a source of cheap labor,
the numbers of such refugees has become so large as to
present a significant problem of control for the
states of those countries they enter. In an effort to
maintain some level of control over this flood, the
various states have created systems of detention
centers, prisons for undocumented foreigners whose
only crime is that of seeking refuge from poverty and
in some cases political oppression without the proper
papers. Even if these centers were built for the
comfort of the inmates, taking their emotional and
intellectual, as well as basic physical, needs into
account, they would still be stealing away the lives
of those individuals interned in the camps, placing
their fate into the hands of bureaucrats whose
priorities are the maintenance of power, profit and
social control. But, for obvious reasons, these
centers are not built for the comfort of the inmates.
They are prisons with all the horror that implies. It
is no surprise then that they are subject to frequent
revolts, the healthy response of those whose dignity
has been pressed beyond endurance, those whom the
state, in its need to control every interaction, has
pushed to the breaking point.

Australia is a destiny for many refugees from Asia
and eastern Africa. These refugees arrive on the
Australian shores to find themselves interned in these
prisons without criminal charges. In June, seven
hundred internees from three detention centers in
Woomera, Port Hedland and Curtin escaped in order to
go to town centers to protest their condition. More
recently, on the weekend beginning August 25 and going
through the 28th , a number of actions against the
centers took place in Australia.

Protests at the Woomera center began on the 25th
with chanting and some damage to the center. On the
26th, there were several demonstrations at various
centers and one in Sydney in solidarity with these .
At Marbinong, two hundred anarchists, socialists and
other supporters met with immigrants who were not in
the camps to protest outside the center there.
Arrangements were made for the people in the camp to
send out messages over the fences with balloons. As
people came to the fence with these messages, some
began to shake it. A high-ranking cop ordered people
away from the fence. In response, they shook it harder
and almost knocked it over. Horse cops were brought in
to protect it. People began chanting such things as
"No more cages", but the words were less significant
than the fact that the noise of the chants made it
impossible for the cops to coordinate theiractivities.

In the wake of the demonstrations by sympathizers
at Marbinong and in Sydney, on the 27th, the protests
at Woomera escalated as some inmates attempted to
dismantle the detention center there. Inmates had been
stoning the staff since Friday night. The authorities
sprayed tear gas in an attempt to quell the uprising.
The rioting inmates set fire to recreational
buildings, a dining room, a school and the cleaning
facilities. An administration building was also
attacked, with stones. The authorities used water
cannons against rioting inmates and attempted to build
a secondary fence to keep them in. However, the
rioters tore this fence down as fast as it was put up.
By August 28th, they were using the pickets as spears
against the guards as they attempted to escape throughholes in the fence.

These detention centers, the states "rational"
response to the problem of control, are further
evidence of the absurdity of borders and of the states
that invent them. But the reality that has forced the
refugees to take the road of immigration is pushing
increasing numbers of people in every part of the
world into landlessness, homelessness, the lack of any
place to be. Thus, all of us who are among the
excluded of this society find ourselves pushed into a
precariousness in which we are all potential refugees.
Our struggle against this situation must escape the
logic of capital and the state. To do so requires that
this struggle not be merely a struggle for survival,
but a struggle for the fullness of life. Capital is
forcing an equality of conditions upon us--in
impoverishment and precariousness. It is necessary to
reject this false mathematical equality that turns us
into ciphers. There is beauty in difference, and
borders, like all institutions of control, seeks to
suppress our experience of that difference in order to
reinforce the false unities based on imposed
identities. Only where differences can intermingle
freely can that which is unique and truly individual
in them come to the fore, that which constitutes the
real human wealth that is beyond every economic
consideration. It is this beautiful idea that can give
our struggle to tear down every fence, every prison
every border, every state and the whole social order
of capital and power the ferocity to push on against.